Product Update: Custom Statuses and Extending Portal Task Deadlines

Product Update: Custom Statuses and Extending Portal Task Deadlines

What We Heard:

From our clients and the market at large, we consistently heard two about two extensions they'd love to use in their workflows:

1. The need for more flexibility in managing session statuses.
2. The ability to easily handle overdue tasks within the event portal.

Event organizers expressed a need for additional options other than the predefined statuses provided in the platform as well as the limitation to accommodate tasks past their deadlines. 

What We Did:

Our product and engineering teams took these requests to heart and got to work on solutions.

Custom Statuses:

As an even organizer, you need the ability to create, edit, and manage custom statuses directly within the event management interface. This will help you tailor the workflow statuses to the specific needs of each event, ensuring efficient session tracking and management.

To address this need, we introduced the ability for customers to add custom statuses that link to the existing statuses in our system. This feature allows you to:

• Create and manage custom statuses such as Offered, Pending Contract, Processing, Declined (Queue).
• Import sessions with custom statuses, ensuring these are preserved even when cloning events.

Example Scenario: Imagine you have a session marked as Accepted, but it’s awaiting a contract signature or other onboarding tasks from the speaker. In this case, you could move it to "Accepted - Need Contract" to track similar sessions that require a final step before confirming.

And a “Declined - Queue” status can be used to hold onto sessions that are not your first choice but may serve as backup options. This flexibility is crucial for filling agenda gaps if your first choice becomes unavailable.

Extending Portal Task Deadlines:

As we know, in a perfect world, every speaker completes their tasks by or before the deadline you provide. But of course, reality is not always perfect, and sometimes we have to provide a grace period, especially when this is a speaker who you really want to participate in your event.

In response, we enhanced our portal settings to allow users to extend "due date" deadlines for tasks, document requests, and forms by anywhere from 1-31 days. This update ensures:

• You can set initial deadlines while allowing a grace period for task completion.
• The system will accept completed tasks even after the initial deadline, although speakers continue to see the original due date in their portals and reminders. 

Example Scenario: If a high-priority speaker needs extra time, you can extend their task deadline without any system issues, ensuring they can still participate fully.

What This Means for You:

Enhanced Flexibility with Custom Statuses:

Tailored Workflows: You can now create custom statuses that fit your specific event needs, improving session tracking and management.

Improved Task Management:

Grace Period Flexibility: Extend deadlines easily within the portal, giving your team and participants more time to complete necessary tasks without any system limitations.

Our Commitment 

These improvements are part of our ongoing commitment to making Sessionboard the most efficient and user-friendly platform for event organizers. We believe these updates will help you manage your events with greater ease and confidence.

Stay tuned for more updates and enhancements as we continue to listen to your feedback and evolve our platform to meet your needs.

Feel free to reach out to our support team if you have any questions or need assistance with these new features.

About Sessionboard

Sessionboard’s deliberate and sole focus on continuous innovation of the speaker and content management process has created a best-in-class platform that saves organizers hundreds of hours per event, helps aggregate and optimize their speaker network, provides speakers with a streamlined and modern experience, and empowers marketing teams to optimize their content strategy year-round.

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